New advisory of MeitY : AI platforms don’t need government permission, focus is on deepfakes

In stark contrast to its previous stand on the approval process for platforms utilising AI models, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology revoked the requirement for platforms to seek government approval for AI models under development. As per the fresh advisory issued on March 15, 2024, MeitY emphasised the importance of labelling AI-generated content, particularly those susceptible to misuse in deepfake technology.

The earlier advisory, which was issued on March 1, was sharply criticised with many start-up founders calling it a bad move. 

Here are the top points in the advisory:

1. In its new form, the intermediaries are no longer required to submit an action taken-cum-status report either but are still required to comply with immediate effect. The obligations in the revised advisory remain the same but the language has been toned down.

2. The new advisory highlights concerns over the negligence of intermediaries and platforms in implementing due diligence, as mandated by the existing IT Rules.

3. Every intermediary and platform is now mandated to ensure that AI-generated content, especially content susceptible to deepfake manipulation, is labelled accordingly.

4. Platforms are instructed to deploy AI models that prevent users from posting or sharing unlawful content.

5. The new advisory retains MeitY’s emphasis on ensuring that all deepfakes and misinformation are easily identifiable. Thus, it has advised intermediaries to either label, or embed the content with “unique metadata or identifier”. Content can be in the form of audio, visual, text or audio-visual.

6. MeitY also wants this label, metadata or unique identifier to identify content as artificially generated/modified/created, and that the intermediary’s computer resource has been used to make such modification. 

The communication has been issued to eight significant social media intermediaries -- Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google/YouTube (for Gemini), Twitter, Snap, Microsoft/LinkedIn (for OpenAI) and ShareChat. They were issued the deepfakes advisory in December 2023 and the March 1 advisory.